# Incident Cost Types

Dispatch allows you to define incident cost types. These types can then be used when editing and adding costs to incidents. Dispatch calculates the incident response cost for all incidents every 5 minutes and saves the result to the default incident cost type. We recommend creating at least the response cost type and making it the default to take advantage of this useful feature. You can find the list of incident cost types (or Forms of Loss) recommended by the Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) Institute [here](https://www.fairinstitute.org/blog/a-crash-course-on-capturing-loss-magnitude-with-the-fair-model).

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**Name:** The name of the incident cost type presented to the user.

**Description:** The description of the incident cost type presented to the user.

**Category:** The Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) Form of Loss (FOL) or category.

**Default:** Whether the incident cost type is the default or not.

**Editable:** Whether this cost type can be edited or not.

### Calculating Incident Cost

Dispatch [calculates](https://github.com/Netflix/dispatch/blob/develop/src/dispatch/incident/service.py#L279) the cost of an incident by adding up the time participants have spent on each incident role \(e.g., Incident Commander\) and applying an [engagement multiplier](https://github.com/Netflix/dispatch/blob/develop/src/dispatch/incident/service.py#L266) that's based on the incident role. It also includes time spent on incident review-related activities. Dispatch calculates and published the cost for all incidents [every 5 minutes](https://github.com/Netflix/dispatch/blob/develop/src/dispatch/incident/scheduled.py#L257).

If you can tweak incident cost parameters on a per-project basis by editing your project [here](../project.mdx)
